The present invention relates to automatic document feeders and scanners, and in particular those suitable for feeding and scanning multiple cards.
Computer printers, scanners, and copiers employ automatic documents feeders to feed multiple sheets of paper from a stack one sheet at a time into position for printing, scanning, copying, and the like. Of course, this saves time hand feeding each sheet. Automatic document feeders such as those found in printers or copier typically have an open tray for holding the stack of paper in horizontal alignment, and a spring-loaded mechanism for keeping the top sheet of the stack at the right height for an extractor mechanism, which pulls each sheet from the stack.
The automatic document feeder described is not suitable for handling a stack of cards, however, because of the typical thickness, texture and material of the cards, and particularly those with raised or embossed printing on one or both sides of the card. Such raised or embossed lettering generates a high coefficient of friction between adjacent cards, which results in cards sticking to each other. Thus, the automatic document feeder is unable to pull one card from the stack at a time. Either the document feeder will pull off more than one card or possibly no cards at all. There are systems for scanning and digitizing a single business card such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,604,640, which is incorporated by reference. However, the user must hand feed the system one card at a time. Of course, any of the results are unworkable, for example, for automatically scanning a stack of business cards one might acquire during a business trip.
The present invention relates to an automatic document feeder for manipulating and scanning multiple documents, sheets, cards and sheet-like substrates. The document feeder may be in a separate or integrated housing with the scanner. In one embodiment, a card feeder includes at least one pickup roller, which is vertically movable, a backstop incline, and output roller(s). The card feeder separates the top card from the remainder of the card stack by using the pickup roller to push the top card of the stack against a backstop incline. The card slides upwards along the incline until it engages output roller(s), which move the card past a scanner.
The present invention relates to mechanisms, which transfer a card across a scanner. The embodiments use one or more output rollers that rotate to push the card toward one or more scanner input rollers. The output roller(s) and scanner input roller(s) can be synchronized or the output roller(s) can freely rotate when the motor driving their rotation is cut off. This allows the scanner input roller(s) to pull the card through or by the output roller(s) into the scanner without synchronization during the scanning process.
The invention relates to embodiments of an automatic document feeder, which can be used with scanners. In others, the invention relates to integrated document feeder and scanner systems. In one embodiment, the feeder is a complete unit that provides not only a housing for the card stack, but includes miniature rollers, motors, and assembly for extracting and feeding individual cards from an input card stack. The feeder can be compact and self-contained unit, suitable for use with small hand-held scanners.
The present invention is suitable for automatic feeding and scanning of business cards, as well as other substrates, sheets, and materials having a coefficient of friction, which tends to resist separation of the cards from each other yet have sufficient rigidity to separate the top substrate, card or sheet from the underlying stack as described.